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Europe Seeks Update of Law on Fliers’ Rights

Deicing on Wednesday at Orly Airport in Paris, where snow snarled air traffic.Credit
Jacques Brinon/Associated Press

PARIS — Denise McDonagh might have gotten her €1,100 settlement from Ryanair faster under new traveler-rights rules the European Union proposed for the airline industry on Wednesday. But she probably wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much.

And that is the rub of the European Union’s proposal, which is meant to clarify air travelers’ rights to aid and compensation when flights are delayed or canceled — as happens tens of thousands of time a year. The proposed changes would also seek tougher oversight and enforcement of airlines’ compliance with the law.

“It is very important that passenger rights do not just exist on paper,” Siim Kallas, the European Union transport commissioner, said Wednesday in Brussels. “We all need to be able to rely on them when it matters most — when things go wrong.”

But the proposal is not completely pro-passenger. The proposed update of rules first spelled out in 2004 would significantly roll back airlines’ obligations to passengers who wind up stranded for extended periods because of extraordinary events like the Icelandic volcano eruption three years ago, which grounded more than 100,000 flights across Europe.

In Ms. McDonagh’s case, she was stranded for a week in April 2010 in Faro, Portugal, trying to get back to Dublin as the ash cloud lingered and European governments dithered about whether they could safely reopen their airspace. But not until this past January was her claim against Ryanair, for lodging and meals, finally resolved by the European Court of Justice, which rejected the airline’s claim that the extraordinary circumstances of the event absolved Ryanair of having to compensate her.

Under the new E.U. rules, if they eventually become law, an airline presumably would be held more closely and quickly accountable.

At the same time, though, the new rules would cap the airline’s liability to three days of lodging and meal reimbursement — meaning Ms. McDonagh would have been eligible for less than half the sum the court awarded.

That is why John Hennessy, the lawyer who represented Ms. McDonagh against Ryanair, considers the European Union’s move to update the traveler-protection rules a step in the wrong direction. “The whole ethos of the original directive is that if someone is stuck in a foreign place and can’t get back, the airline pays the reasonable expenses,” Mr. Hennessy said by telephone from Dublin on Wednesday.

Ryanair said Wednesday that it welcomed the capping of the passenger food-and-lodging provision to three nights, even if it was not completely happy with all the proposed changes.

The debate is likely to continue, but one thing seems certain: Eight years after the European Union introduced its far-reaching package of passenger rights legislation, the law is still not well understood by customers. And critics say this leads to frequent abuses by airlines.

Among the proposed changes is a rule obliging airlines to inform passengers about the nature of any flight disruption no later than 30 minutes after the scheduled departure time. Passengers who are delayed two hours or more would be entitled to care and assistance at the airport, including meals and refreshments, regardless of the distance of their flight. After five hours, passengers would have the right to renounce the flight and have their ticket price reimbursed.

In the event of a flight that has already boarded and is delayed by more than an hour on the tarmac, passengers would have the right to free drinking water, access to toilets and medical assistance. Should the tarmac delay extend to five hours, passengers would have the right to cancel their ticket and get off the plane.

“Complaints about air travel amount to 80 percent within the transport sector, which shows the extent of the problem in Europe,” Monique Goyens, director general of the Brussels-based consumer organization BEUC, said in a statement. “We hope this prompts a much-needed upsurge in airlines’ respect for passenger rights.”

The proposal, which would require approval by a majority of the Union’s 27 member countries, as well as the European Parliament, aims to address the most common airline practices that remain a regular source of frustration to travelers. Helen Kearns, a commission spokeswoman, said that if adopted, the new rules would probably take effect before the end of 2015.

The E.U. regulation applies to all carriers that take off from an airport in one of the Union’s member states, regardless of their nationality. The rules do not apply to non-European airlines on flights that originate outside the European Union.

The new proposal would clarify the rights of passengers who miss a connecting flight because of a delay. Travelers would be entitled to care and assistance after two hours of waiting at their connecting airport and financial compensation if their arrival was delayed by more than five hours on any flight of less than 3,500 kilometers, or about 2,175 miles.

For flights of up to 6,000 kilometers, the right to compensation would kick in after nine hours, while for longer flights the deadline would be 12 hours.

Airlines would also be compelled to re-route passengers on another airline — or an alternative transport mode — if they were unable to find an alternate route on their own services within 12 hours of the original departure time.

Rules for handling passengers’ complaints would also be tightened. Airlines would have to establish clear complaint procedures and systems and to acknowledge complaints within a week of receipt. A deadline of two months would be set for airlines to formally reply.

Airline groups also cautiously welcomed the proposal. Viktoria Vajnai, a spokeswoman for the Association of European Airlines, in Brussels, described it as “a step in the right direction” for both airlines and passengers.

“We believe that a comprehensive and coherent regulation will benefit not only passengers but the whole aviation industry,” Ms. Vajnai said.

The International Air Transport Association applauded the new limits to airlines’ obligations as an “important outcome.” But the airline lobbying group, which represents 240 airlines worldwide, also cautioned that the regulations might be difficult to enforce outside the European Union if they conflicted with other countries’ consumer protection regimes.

It also said that the proposed regulation covering delays to connecting flights unfairly placed the entire burden for compensation on the operator of the first flight — at odds with existing international rules that require such costs to be shared between affected carriers.

And Ryanair, which is a budget airline, took issue with the proposed requirement that airlines rebook passengers on competing airlines if a solution could not be found within 12 hours.

That rule would “unfairly and disproportionately increase costs for low-fare airlines, which do not participate in airline alliance programs,” the company said. It was alluding to the alliances of big airlines that can enable them to send passengers to other carriers and still share the ticket revenue.

For all the potential benefits to customers, the new rules would set strict limits on the amount of care and assistance airlines must provide in extraordinary circumstances beyond their control, like extreme weather or an air traffic controllers’ strike. Or a volcanic ash cloud.

Current rules provide for an unlimited right to such care, but airlines have long argued that this places an unfair financial burden on them. During the weeklong volcano aftermath in 2010, for example, global airlines claimed nearly $2 billion in lost revenue and added customer-care expenses.

Even during the ash-cloud disruption, though, many airlines resisted meeting their legal obligations — as the European Court of Justice ruled in Ms. McDonagh’s case against Ryanair.

But under the new proposal, airlines would have to pay only for a maximum of three nights of hotel accommodation in such situations. Beyond that, airports and local authorities — not the airlines — would be expected to prepare contingency plans for dealing with mass disruptions.

Rights to financial compensation would also be significantly curtailed. The proposal extends the delay threshold for any compensation to five hours from three hours currently for intra-European flights. But the right to compensation for inter-continental passengers would not kick in until a delay reached at least nine hours.

BEUC, the European consumer rights group, said it was disappointed by the new limits on passenger care and compensation. But it said it welcomed the clarification of legal gray areas that until now had often made it difficult for passengers to seek redress.

Mr. Hennessy, the lawyer for Ms. McDonagh, said that carriers reaped tens of millions of euros each year from cancellation insurance they sell to passengers, which goes toward offsetting expenses when things go wrong.

“Let’s say I’m stuck for two weeks through no fault of my own, while these airlines have already charged me and everyone else an insurance levy,” Mr. Hennessy said. “So now they don’t have to give me my full compensation? I think that’s wrong.”

Correction: March 14, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the lawyer for a traveler who claimed compensation for being stranded for a week. He is John Hennessy, not Hennessey.

A version of this article appears in print on March 14, 2013, on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: Europe Proposes New Rights for Fliers When Flights Are Delayed or Canceled. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe